Next Season Starts\u2026NOW!<\/a> In that post, I encouraged you, after a short break to rest and recover, to use the summer to continue to develop yourself physically, technically, and mentally. That progression continues as you get on snow in the next weeks and months. You are now entering a critical final preparation period in which you want to consolidate all of the gains you\u2019ve made in the off season and fine tune your skiing so you are a lean, mean speed machine this race season.<\/p>\n![\"Atomic\"](\"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Atomic-logo.jpg\")
Your motto during this important prep period should be: \u201cMoney in the bank, baby, money in the bank!\u201d (it won\u2019t work unless you say \u201cbaby\u201d). What do I mean by that, you might be asking. Well, you should think of all of your preparations as deposits that you\u2019re making in your ski racing \u201cbank.\u201d Your goal is to put as much \u201cmoney\u201d (i.e., effort, improvement) in the bank because you want to write as big a \u201ccheck\u201d as you possibly can on race day. What makes ski racing different from a debit card is that, in ski racing, there is no overdraft protection, meaning you can\u2019t make withdrawals that you can\u2019t cover. The bottom line is that with ski racing, you can only take out what you put into it.<\/p>\n
I have a few recommendations as you enter this final prep period.<\/p>\n
First, assuming you\u2019ve worked hard this off-season, if you haven\u2019t acknowledged all of the deposits you\u2019ve been making to your ski-racing bank account, now is the time to do it. Think of the hours of hard work you\u2019ve put in in the gym, on the road, track, and field, and, of course, on the hill. Recognize the improvements you\u2019ve made physically, technically, tactically, and mentally. Add up all those deposits and make note of the size of your account. Use that number to gain confidence in your ability to achieve your goals in the coming season; the more \u201cmoney\u201d you have in the bank, the more confidence you will have to spend next winter.<\/p>\n
Second, in the coming months before your first race, ask yourself how you can put even more money in the bank. What do you need to really work on during this final prep period? Increase your strength or mobility? Getting better at tuning your skis? Or honing some mental area such as your intensity or focus? Whatever it is, identify what you need to work on most and really commit these next few months to making the most deposits to your bank account as possible.<\/p>\n
Your goal, when you get in the starting gate of your first race of the season, is to be able to say to yourself, \u201cMoney in the bank, baby, money in the bank!\u201d Simply translated, this statement means \u201cI\u2019m as prepared as I can be to ski my fastest.\u201d When you kick out of the gate, you\u2019ll know you\u2019re ready to make a big, fat withdrawal that will enable you to ski as well as you can. Of course, that doesn\u2019t guarantee success, but, at the end of the race day, what more can you do.<\/p>\n
Want to make mental training a part of your off-season training program? Take a look at my<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>online mental training courses<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to believe that we are only weeks away from the start of another ski season. The snow guns are blasting in Colorado and I will be on snow with athletes soon. For some of you, I\u2019m sure you\u2019re excited to be able to snap into your skis again after being off snow for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516],"tags":[820,185,350,394,153,155],"class_list":["post-13874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ski-racing","tag-conditioning","tag-confidence","tag-mental-preparation","tag-mental-training","tag-ski-racing-2","tag-sport-psychology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19072,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13874\/revisions\/19072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drjimtaylor.com\/4.0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}